


That Damn Blue Dress

by thesilvergoddess



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Femslash February, Femslash February 2018, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Smut, gay?, theres cuddles and stuff? and cute things.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 02:53:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13604043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilvergoddess/pseuds/thesilvergoddess
Summary: Eleanor spills some stuff on Tahani's least favorite dress, and they have a dressup party. And an undressing party.





	That Damn Blue Dress

“Eleanor, what are you doing?” The tone was accusatory at best and forking pissed at worst. Eleanor was leaning more toward the second one.

The Bad Place was wearing her down. She was exhausted. She’d already talked to Janet about it a few times under duress. There was some kind of problem where Michael just kept resetting them because they would find out that they weren’t in The Good Place after all. But this time, Eleanor knew and knew she couldn’t tell anyone at all because Michael  _ would  _ reset them all, and they’d been getting along so  _ well. _ She didn’t know what loop this was, and she sure as fork didn’t care. 

All she knew was that she had to keep it to herself. She had to keep it a secret. 

Which was… not good. 

She could keep a secret, sure, but she had this  _ terrible _ tendency to blab it as blackmail or the final say in an argument, and the way things had been going lately, that wasn’t nearly as much as it used to be… But Michael would know  _ something _ was up. He knew these things. He was good at it even if he played dumb extremely well. 

But right now, she had  _ much _ bigger problems. 

She’d just spilled coffee all over Tahani’s favorite couch and all over a dress Tahani had set out for a party later that evening and broke that stupid gilded mug she was drinking out of.  _ Sure _ , Janet could tidy it up, but Eleanor had been caught red-handed and coffee stained. The thing about Tahani was that if she  _ knew _ about something and then replaced it, the replacement (an exact replication, mind you) would  _ never _ be as good as the original.

Eleanor sighed, slumping dramatically, gesturing toward the ruined combination of silk and chiffon. “You didn’t like that dress anyway, right?”

Tahani frowned her pouty-lipped frown. “What on earth makes you think that?”

Eleanor couldn’t really explain it, but for some reason, she just  _ knew _ that the blue atrocity on the couch wasn’t Tahani’s cup of tea. Tahani hadn’t ever exactly said that out loud, but there was just  _ something _ tickling at the back of Eleanor’s mind like remembering a dream. 

“Just a hunch,” she lied. 

_ At least I can still lie here.  _

Tahani frowned but said nothing else. “No, I didn’t.” She put up a finger with that look in her eye that meant she was going to spent the next five minutes explaining the exact peculiarities that would have made her uncomfortable with the dress or otherwise find it… “I find it distasteful.” Distasteful was the word. “It doesn’t exactly  _ flatter _ my legs nearly as much as I would like and the band around the middle just calls attention to the fact that it’s a good centimeter too far from where it should be. Really, it’s just a terrible dress, and I have no idea why it would be in The Good Place. Truly, it’s just a terrible design. Like if Marc Jacobs had gone blind and…” She smiled sweetly. “Lost all his talent before deciding to design a dress.”

Eleanor frowned.  _ She _ didn’t like the dress because it was too fancy, but going that far was a little harsh. She fell back on her old habits almost immediately. “Sooo… You’re not mad at me?”

Tahani shook her head and set her coffee mug down on an overly ornate table of gold and marble. Her style was so far removed from Eleanor’s, but there was something appealing in the way Tahani viewed herself like she deserved every single over-the-top item in there. But also infuriating. Especially infuriating. 

“Quite to the contrary, actually. I think, as my best friend, you should come with me and help me pick out a new dress for Chidi’s birthday party.” Tahani came forward and placed her great delicate hands on Eleanor’s shoulders, and Eleanor immediately got a weird, warm, queasy feeling she usually got when she drank too much Fireball and needed to throw up in her grandmother’s shrubs. Not that  _ that  _ had happened before. “You’re going to be an excellent judge, I just feel it.”

“I feel like you’re insulting me, but you’re too damn smooth for me to actually tell,” Eleanor grumbled. 

Tahani kissed her forehead and called, “Janet?”

Janet, in her classic uniform of a skirt-suit, appeared with a ding. “Hi, there.”

“Janet, can you  _ please _ replace this couch and dispose of this  _ horrid _ dress?”

“Of course,” Janet said smiling her genial smile. Another weird blip noise and the couch was replaced, the cup was gone, and the dress was also gone without a trace. “Is there anything else you need?”

“Oh, yes. Can you possibly pull… hmm… Can you pull my Christmas Charity Ball of 2015 wardrobe and put it in my bedroom? I’d like to sift through it again.”

“Absolutely,” Janet said. “Anything else?”

“No, thank you. That’ll be all.”

Another ding and Janet was gone.

Tahani looked down at Eleanor with a smile that made Eleanor think of the time her cousin had closed the hood of his old Chevy onto his asshole dad and given her the same look.

“Shall we?”

Eleanor couldn’t hold back her groan.

She’d been in Tahani’s room on multiple occasions like these, but she’d never found herself more comfortable than right now. She lounged on the bed while she watched Tahani undress, and god _ damn, _ there was nothing wrong with that woman. Her legs were only the start of something equally as smooth and sweet as the rest of her - strong without being muscular, lovely without being alienating… maybe. No, okay, it was a little alienating. 

“Tahani, have you always been like… stacked?”

Tahani turned in the sunlight streaming through her wide window to her balcony. Even her underwear matched. Eleanor didn’t even have matching underwear in this… whatever she was in. Something about that other Eleanor not caring or wastefulness or some other kind of crap. She simply stood in all her elegance in her white silk bra and her equally white, equally silky cheeky underpants with the most perplexed look on her face. Even after taking off and putting on about twenty dresses, her hair was still immaculate and her makeup was flawless.

“Beg your pardon?”

Eleanor shrugged the best she could while laying down. “You know… Stacked. Slammin.”

Tahani waved a hand and ended up pulling one of her arms over her perfectly flat stomach like a shield. “Yes, yes, I know. But why would you ask such a thing?”

Eleanor shrugged again, noticing that Tahani’s body had not a single chub roll despite her slouching. 

“Well… if you  _ must _ know, no. I never… I never really bloomed until I was well away from everyone else in my family.” She lowered both of her hands and tapped on her thighs for a second, looking away from Eleanor. She started walking away and pulled a robe from a hook. “I never really considered myself  _ too _ beautiful.”

_ Liar. _

“I mean… I’m much better than the average person, of course, but at the same time, I always… suffered in comparison to my sister.” Tahani laughed, but Eleanor knew it wasn’t genuine. It was the way her voice quavered a little. The way her laugh was too sharp. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now.”

“Why’s that?” Eleanor wanted to hit herself in her own mouth because she was getting into some real touchy-feely kind of bullshirt area here. 

Tahani sat on the bed and huffed, looking very,  _ very _ tired very suddenly. “Did you know my own parents misspelled my name on their will?”

Eleanor blinked and sat up beside Tahani. “What? You’re kidding.”

Tahani shook her head and started gnawing on her stupid, perfect bottom lip. Those berry-red lips parted just for a moment and then closed again. “They wanted to give everything to my sister because she was always… better.”

Eleanor knew that the best thing to do right now would be to not say a single thing because of how utterly inept she knew she was, and even though she was uncomfortable, she at least wanted Tahani to get this out of the way before they had to do this at some other point in their friendship-rivalry. “Welp,” she said, like an idiot.

Tahani laughed like there was a sob just behind it. “‘Welp,’ indeed.”

They sat there for another long minute, and Eleanor started feeling herself getting antsy. “What could be better than you anyway? I mean… you’ve got it all. You’ve done everything and then some, and you’re hot! Come on.”

Tahani leaned over onto Eleanor’s shoulder, though she  _ did  _ have to lean down a good ways. “You’re so charming in your quaint little way.”

The comment scratched at Eleanor’s brain like a kid with a nail and a freshly painted bench. She was doing her best with Tahani, but sometimes she just wanted to punch her in the mouth. Gently. With her mouth. 

_ No!!! _

Where had that thought even come from?

“Unfortunately,” Tahani continued, breaking Eleanor’s train of thought. “My sister,” she spit the word. “never had much regard for me anyway. She was an artistic prodigy, and I spent the rest of my life chasing after fame and glory, but what's millions of dollars raised and in your pocket when all anyone wants to talk about is…”

“Your sister,” Eleanor finished. 

Tahani didn't respond, but the way her jaw set told Eleanor everything she needed to know. 

“You know, I don't have siblings or anything, but my parents were super not cool. They didn't really care about me and didn't even notice when I left home.”  _ Stop talking!  _ “So I mean, I get it in my own way, I guess.” She paused. “You know, family problems. Not the millions and prodigies and whatever.”

Tahani looked over at her with glassy, pre-crying eyes. “Eleanor, I had no idea.” She paused, and Eleanor knew that she was about to say something snide. “I should have guessed from all the fear of commitment you have that you didn’t have a proper family to raise you growing up.”

And there it was. 

Eleanor frowned. “Okay, listen, Tahani.”  _ Don’t do it. _ “I… may not exactly be the… best person here, but you aren’t either.”

Tahani shook her head. “That’s not true. I saw a scoreboard for points once and you were the third from the top!”

“Okay, so… Maybe… those… aren’t really… valid.”

_ IDIOT. _

Tahani frowned. “Beg your pardon?”

“They’re not mine, Tahani. I don’t… Hmm… Okay, let’s put it like this. One time, my birch-friend-not-really-friend Karen thought she won a contest that I had “entered” her into because she slept with the guy that I was planning to go for, so I convinced her through some printing and a couple bucks that that she was going on a cruise, so she bought all into it. She went and bought a bunch of beach gear and stuff and like… spent so much forking money and even bought me some things. But like… there wasn’t a cruise. So what I did was I basically set her up to go to this place and look like an idiot and make her spend all this money, and she ended up getting mugged, and all of her stuff got stolen.”

Tahani’s frown was ever-deepening. “I don’t… follow…”

“Tahani, what if we’re Karen? What if we’re the people that did bad things and are being punished for it?”

Tahani laughed her polite, pitying laugh and delicately slapped Eleanor’s shoulder. “Oh, Eleanor, you silly thing. You had me really going for a minute.”

Eleanor felt her mood crash a little, and the irritable old Eleanor was starting to sneak back up on her. “Tahani, I’m being serious.”

“Oh,  _ please _ , Eleanor, I know your type! You’re just trying to make me feel better at your own expense, and it is  _ so _ charming, but I assure you that it isn’t necessary.” 

Eleanor didn’t even have anything to say to this beautiful gazelle of a woman. She tried opening up to her, but that didn’t work. She tried to tell her the truth of the place they were trapped in, and she hadn’t bought it. But then again, it was a lot to take in, right?

Tahani patted Eleanor’s jeaned-leg and sighed. “Sometimes, I  _ do _ wonder. Everything seems so far-fetched in this place, but it’s right at our fingertips…”

She leaned over a little closer to Eleanor, her hand that was nearly on Eleanor’s knee sliding up a bit.

Eleanor leaned back and gave Tahani a long hard look, trying to figure out if this was some big, elaborate prank to get her to admit she had a  _ massive _ boner for Tahani. It did not appear to be a prank. 

Her doe eyes locked with Eleanor’s, and Eleanor felt her heart start up like a jet engine with no  _ thought _ to calm back down. 

_Okay, this is happening. This is happening. This is_ ** _definitely_** _happening_.

“Eleanor… Have you considered that… Oh, I don’t know. There’s all this soulmate confusion… The times where we...” She slid closer, and sweet perfume wafted up into Eleanor’s face. “We could just… forget our old lives.”

“I’m trying every dang day,” Eleanor sighed, leaning toward Tahani despite herself. 

“Do you think that maybe all of our confusion… with Jason. With Chidi. With each other. Do you think it’s because maybe  _ we’re _ supposed to be together?”

Eleanor looked back into Tahani’s beseeching eyes for a long second. “Well…” She knew she wasn’t going to get out of this one, and heck, if she wouldn’t remember it later, what was the harm in trying some different things out in the afterlife? “Do you think we balance each other out, then?”

Tahani pouted a little, looking to the left with a little frown and a tilted head. “That would certainly be the case for Jason and Chidi. You know… Chidi’s brains and sophistication and Jason’s…” She paused, obviously looking for positives. “Jason’s humor. So I don’t see how it would be different for us. My style and superior education and your worldly ways and… things.”

Despite Tahani’s tendency to overstate every single thing to the point of insult, Eleanor chewed on her bottom lip for a long second, wondering how she could justify this to herself later if she ever remembered it. She didn’t want to take advantage of a situation just because there was an opportunity. No, she didn’t want to be like that anymore. 

Tahani didn’t really give Eleanor much more room for thinking before Tahani’s warm, floral skin was against her own, her always-glazed soft, pouty lips on her own. Eleanor wheeled back instinctively, blinking hard to try to make this weird daytime fantasy go away. It wasn’t the time or the place to get all randy. Chidi’s party was in a few hours, and there was still a ton to do before he, invariably, got a stomach ache over having that much attention to himself. 

The two of them had to go on and get dressed and keep up appearances and-

“Is… this not what you want?” Tahani asked quietly, so different from her usual haughty tone. 

Eleanor opened her mouth to speak, and Tahani slumped over, her hands dropping into her lap, head tilted back eyes closed. 

“I  _ knew _ I could have kept that to myself, but I just  _ can’t _ stop  _ thinking _ about you, Eleanor. Your laugh. Your smile. The way you try so hard to not look uncomfortable and fail miserably. Your quaint and exciting stories about your mundane life… I simply cannot remove it from my mind. I can’t remove  _ you _ from my mind.”

_ Okay, just go for it. It’ll make her happy, and you’re totally into it anyway. Isn’t that like… the best case scenario? _

_ Do something, dummy! _

And do something, she did. After the briefest moment of hesitation, Eleanor lurched herself forward and reconnected with Tahani, locking her elbow and nearly falling over on top of Tahani. A bubble of some kind of feeling swelled in her chest and threatened to burst, but she got that shit in check before she could outwardly express whatever bizarre emotion was trying to encroach when another feeling crept in. 

Tahani was right. Eleanor  _ wanted _ this. 

Tahani remained frozen under Eleanor’s touch for the longest moment, the kiss between them chaste and strained, time ticking by as quickly as if it were standing still. Then, the ice between them cracked, shattered, and melted all at once against Eleanor’s lips, against her fingers, against her body. 

Tahani’s warm skin seemed to burn Eleanor’s at first like a holy symbol against her profane hands. The silk and lace of Tahani’s underwear caught against callouses Eleanor didn’t know she even had. The breaths between their increasingly fervent kisses escaped like whispered prayers to a deity whose name had long been lost. 

This wasn’t what Eleanor had anticipated. This wasn’t how Eleanor had imagined. 

Like two awkward, horny teenagers desperately making out on a bed of the finest materials. 

Like two lost kids in an unfamiliar world without a map or a sense of direction.

Like two dying stars gravitating toward one another before it all came to an unfortunate, brilliant end doomed to happen again.

Her stomach was soft. 

Her kisses were scorching. 

Her tongue was slick and silver as a snake’s, hissing out exclamations of wonder and pleasure. 

Her hands were sure. 

Her breath was shaky.

Her voice was an angelic melody. 

Warmth and fear and tingling passion twisted in desperate lovemaking. 

Gasps. 

Shudders.

Skin against skin. 

Flesh against flesh. 

Tahani’s nails bit into Eleanor’s shoulders, and her body quivered under every calculated pressure against her. The hunger and desire of isolation fueled Eleanor’s descent--Tahani’s every calling move lighting her fire. 

A short cry. 

Beautiful waves.

An ocean of calls.

A quiet lull of a sunset between flurries of activity. 

Eleanor didn’t have to wait long before Tahani caught her breath, a crimson blush on her face and chest that smeared across her breasts like a feather boa. 

And after, Tahani--beautiful, sexy, ginormous Tahani--held Eleanor close to her bare chest, twirling Eleanor’s hair between her long, dexterous fingers. Eleanor closed her eyes for a moment, listening to Tahani’s quick, strong heart beating out a steady rhythm before Tahani took a breath, and Eleanor looked up expectantly, waiting for something like “We can never do this again” or “That was great, bye.”

Then again, Eleanor was beginning to realize that all of her relationships were total bullshirt. 

Tahani’s voice, though quiet, still had a little tremor. “Eleanor…”

“Yeah?” Eleanor waited, expecting the worst. 

“Should we… get a shower together… and then get dressed for the party?”

Eleanor felt herself smiling before she could be cool about anything. “That sounds… great… If I could still stand up yet.”

Tahani snorted, but of course, it was a dainty, ladylike snort. “Perhaps I was too enthusiastic to take that into account.”

“You think?” Eleanor said, wrinkling her nose and laying back down on Tahani’s chest. 

A moment of silence passed between them.

“Are you alright, Eleanor?” 

The question hit her like a sack of bricks. “I mean… I guess,” she lied.  _ No, I don’t want to go back to that again. _ “I guess… It’s the stuff I was talking about earlier.”

“Ah,” Tahani nodded, growing quiet again for a long period of time.

Eleanor’s fight-or-flight was starting to kick in when Tahani spoke again. “If this is the Bad Place, then, Eleanor…”

Eleanor looked up.

“Then, I suppose I’m rather glad that I’m here with you…” She trailed off, and her dimples showed a smile she was trying to hide. “Soulmate.”

Eleanor rolled her eyes. “We’ll see about that. You, uh, wanna go figure it out in the shower?”

Tahani smiled back brilliantly.


End file.
